Among the many Scottish
generals of Gustavus, Sir James King of Barrocht, in Aberdeenshire,
was one of the most eminent, and obtained the government of Vlotho,
a fortified town on the Weser, which belonged to the Dukes of
Brunswick and Counts of Waldeck. Some unfortunate circumstances had
compelled him to leave Scotland for the Swedish service; for there
is still extant a letter from the Earls of Mar and Melrose to James
VI., dated 30th March 1619, praying to have him pardoned for slaying
Alexander Seaton of Meldrum, with whom his family were at feud. "He
was a person of great honour; but the little he had saved of it at
Vlotho in Germanie, where he made shipwrecke of much of it, he losd
in England,” says a cavalier, with some asperity. For his eminent
services to Charles I. he was raised to the peerage as Lord Eythen,
in March 1642, and commanded the royal troops against the
Parliament; but, being forfeited, he died in obscurity, and
childless. His title has never since been claimed.
The capture of Donauworth laid open to Gustavus the opposite shores
of the Danube, and now the small river Lech alone separated him from
Bavaria, whose dark mountains of granite bounded the horizon beyond
that winding river. The immediate danger of his dominions roused all
the activity of Duke Maximilian; and, however little he had
disturbed the advance of the victorious invaders hitherto, he now
resolved to dispute resolutely what remained of their course.
On the opposite bank of the Lech, near the small town of Raine,
Count Tilly occupied a strong fortified camp, which was surrounded
by three rivers, and seemed to bid defiance to the foe. Every bridge
on the Lech was destroyed, and the passes of the stream were
protected by garrisons as far as Augsburg; and into this camp the
Bavarian Elector threw himself with all the troops he could collect.
After resting for four days at Donauworth, Gustavus advanced at the
head of thirty-two thousand horse and foot, to force the passage of
the river.
Previous to this, Hepburn had been engaged in the capture of one of
the fortresses which defended it. Accompanied by a body of horse
under the command of the Baron Kochtictke, a Bohemian noble, his
brigade marched to a rocky gorge three miles from Donauworth, where
the castle of Oberndorff guarded a ford of the Lech, which there
emptied itself into the Danube, among some little islets covered
with foliage. This was a massive feudal fortress, a seat of the
Counts of Fugger, who were lords of all that district. The family
were originally rich merchants of Augsburg; but having become
soldiers, they were ennobled, and the Count paid yearly for his
Graveshaft ten thouqpnd rix-dollars. He had served the Emperor long
and faithfully, and bore on his person the marks of innumerable
wounds. Munro describes him as being handsome, strong, and stately
beyond most men, and of undoubted courage in single combat, being
fortunate among all his compeers in proving victorious.
Situated on the very verge of the Lech, his castle was one of those
donjon towers which are so characteristic of the wild and varied
scenery of the Danube, and carry back the mind to the romance and
chivalry, the wars and terrors of the Middle Ages—the abode of iron
barons and gliding spectres—having been built in that lawless time
when an electoral “archbishop thought he had a fair revenue before
him when he built his fortress at the junction offour cross-roads."
The garrison of Oberndorff consisted of four hundred men. It had
twelve pieces of cannon, and a deep graff or moat, which Hepburn
encircled by dividing the brigade. But no sooner did the Count’s
soldiers perceive, by the smoke curling from the blown matches, that
the enemy were about to “make service” against them, than they
became seized by a sudden panic, and endeavoured to escape. At their
head he sallied from a postern, mounted on a fleet horse, and
sheathed in mail of proof. Pouring down the steep and dark defile,
among rocks and overhanging trees, they escaped—by dint of pike and
sword cutting a passage towards the bridge of Baine, a
well-fortified town on the Lech. Hepburn despatched the Baron after
them on the spur, with his dragoons, who overtook them at the end of
the bridge. Two hundred were cut to pieces, and two hundred taken
prisoners; but the strong Count of Fligger hewed his way through
like a mailed Hercules, and reached the Bavarian frontier. Hepburn
then rejoined the army, which advanced with all speed to force the
passage of the Lech, which formed the last hope of falling Bavaria.
The eyes of all Europe were fixed on this movement, for the whole
power of the Empire was arrayed on the Bavarian side of the stream,
and seventy pieces of cannon swept the deep gorge through which its
waters rush impetuously from the mountains of the Tyrol to mingle
with the Danube. Every means that the art of war could furnish had
been ably adopted by Tilly and the Bavarian Elector; and thick, like
a field of corn, the dense battalions of their pikes and musketeers
were formed along the banks, at that very point towards which the
army of Gustavus was marching.
They came in view of each other on the 5th April 1632.
The Swedish train, seventy-two pieces of cannon, opened on the foe,
and seventy pieces replied. The Bavarian troops were soon thrown
into disorder; but the bronzed veterans of old Tilly stood firm, and
for six-and-thirty hours one hundred and forty-two pieces of heavy
ordnance maintained thus a cross fire from opposite sides of the
stream, dashing the trees and rocks to fragments, ploughing up the
grassy banks, and making frightful havoc in the ranks of the
Austrians and Swedes. The leg of Count Tilly, then in his seventieth
year, was taken off by a cannon-shot, and the great Baron Altringer
was severely wounded by another. Count Merod£ and one thousand
Bavarians were literally torn to shreds; and, on being deprived of
the animating presence of their great leader Tilly, their comrades
retired in confusion to the wood. Gustavus, under cover of the thick
white smoke of the batteries, and a denser vapour purposely caused
by burning piles of damp wood and wet straw, threw across from bank
to bank a bridge, which his able engineers had constructed in a
peculiar manner; and by this his infantry began to pass the Lech,
Sir John Hepburn with his men forming the vanguard of the whole—for
on every desperate duty the Green Brigade had the post of honour. To
feel the way as Gustavus advanced, Captain Forbes, with thirty
Scottish musketeers, was sent towards the wood which had received
the fugitives, and found they had already retired beyond gunshot,
leaving behind two steel-clad videttes, whom he found sitting on
horseback, carbine in hand, at the edge of the thicket, and made
prisoners.
The Bavarian Elector retreated with all his troops towards
Ingolstadt, leaving his territories exposed to the whole tide of the
Swedish war, which now flowed from the ensanguined frontier over his
hitherto peaceful and fertile realm. At Ingolstadt the veteran Tilly
expired. In him the Imperial army sustained a loss that was
irreparable, and Romanism lost its most able defender.
In his dying moments the Jesuit soldier remembered his duty to the
Emperor, and his last orders to the Elector were, to take Ratisbon,
to maintain the command of the Danube, and keep open the
communication with Bohemia; and so he died in great bodily agony,
only a few days before he must have endured the humiliation of
resigning his baton to a successor—the great Wallenstein, doke of
Friedland. The tidings of his death, and the invasion of Bavaria,
struck the Protestants of Europe with astonishment; but die
Catholics heard of them with rage and alarm.
The old Laird of Bandean—“with the young cavaliers of the Scots
nation that followed him, such as Colonell Hngh Hamilton, Colonell
John Forbesse, Lieutenant-Colonell Gonne, Lieutenant-Colonell
Mongomerie, Major Ruthven, Major Bruntisfield, and divers other
Scots captaines, such as Captain Dumbarre, who was killed by the
boores”—overran all Swabia, and laid every town under contribution,
from Ulm on the Danube to Bavarian Lindau.
So low fell the pride of the Emperor that be begged both money and
troops from Rome, imploring that a new crusade might be preached
against Gustavus and his soldiers; but Urban VIII. declined his
requests, and, strange to say, instead of them promised a jubilee.
The army of Gustavus swept on like a comet! Raine, Neuburg, and
Augsburg, were all stormed and captured in succession. As he marched
through Bavaria, almost every city opened its gates to him; and now
the whole country, to the barriers of the capital, lay open to his
soldiers, for their valour was irresistible.
Eleven centuries before this period, St Robert the Scot had first
preached the Christian faith in these districts, and baptised Theodo
III., the prince of that Pagan territory.
From Augsburg, after establishing there the Reformirte Kirche, the
army marched to Ingolstadt, where the unfortunate Tilly had so
lately expired; and for eight days the Green Brigade was employed in
the siege of this town, which stands near the Danube, and was
defended by a castle built by George the Rich, and strengthened by
the fortifications added by Duke Wilhelm in 1537. It was famous for
the almost priceless reliquiary and shrines of its great church,
which then contained a pure golden image of the Virgin, worth fifty
thousand crowns, before which knelt a King of France, also of gold,
and worth the same sum—which would no doubt have formed a notable
prize for Hepburn’s bold Presbyterians.
The Duke of Bavaria had just marched through Ingolstadt, and
encamped on the other side of the Danube, on which the strong
garrison closed their gates against Gustavus; and, resolving to make
the utmost resistance, caused Hepburn to lose many of his best men
in operations which were ultimately futile.
On the evening of Thursday the 19th April, the King, expecting a
sally, ordered him to post the brigade on some high ground, to repel
any issue of the enemy from a gate that lay near. His soldiers
remained under arms there the whole night, which was bitterly cold;
but, the glow of their lighted matches enabling the foe to fire with
precision, a deadly and destructive cannonade was unshrinkingly
endured by them from sunset till sunrise on Friday—a night which
seemed, says Munro, "the longest in the yeare, though in Aprill; for
at one shot I lost twelve men of my owne companie, not knowing what
became of them.” So hot was the service that this cavalier vowed,
“He who was not that night afraid of cannon-shot might next day,
without harm, have been brayed into gunpowder.”
Three hundred men were killed on the ground, yet the Scots never
flinched from their post, and never did soldiers stand to be
slaughtered with greater coolness, courage, and discipline; and the
morning sun, as he rose above the hills of Bavaria, saw still their
diminished but steady ranks standing, like an iron rampart, by the
shore of the Danube.
Gustavus had his horse shot under him, and was wounded, when making
dispositions to storm a high halfmoon which was defended by fifteen
hundred Bavarian arqubusiers; and the young Margrave of
Badendourlach, who stood by his side, had his head carried off by a
cannon-shot. After eight days of incessant fighting on both sides,
Gustavus deemed it advisable to raise the siege, and penetrate into
the interior of Bavaria, that the Elector might be drawn inwards for
the defence of his own territories, and thus be compelled to strip
the Danube of its defenders.
He marched to Gysenfeld, where the whole army paid the honours of
military burial to the remains of the young Margrave, with two
rounds of cannon and musketry; and there, too, they interred Captain
David Ramsay, a veteran cavalier of the Green Brigade, who on the
march expired of a fever. |